Anon. Lolita (1962). Differences between the film and the book. (26 Apr 2017) Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita_(1962_film)#Differences_between_the_film_and_the_book.

There are many differences
between Kubrick’s film adaptation and Nabokov’s novel, including some events
that were entirely omitted. Most of the sexually explicit innuendos,
references and episodes in the book were taken out of the film because of the
strict censorship of the 1960s; the sexual relationship between Lolita and
Humbert is implied and never depicted graphically on the screen. In addition,
some events in the film differ from the novel, and there are also changes in
Lolita’s character. Some of the differences are listed below:

Lolita’s age, name, feelings
and fate

Lolita’s age was raised from 12
to early teens in the film to meet MPAA standards. Kubrick had
been warned that censors felt strongly about using a more physically developed
actress, who would be seen to be at least 14. As such, Sue Lyon was chosen for
the title role, partly due to her more mature appearance.

The name “Lolita” is used only
by Humbert as a private pet nickname in the novel, whereas in the film several
of the characters refer to her by that name. In the book, she is referred to
simply as “Lo” or “Lola” or “Dolly” by the other characters. Various critics,
such as Susan Sweeney, have observed that since she never calls herself “Lolita”,
Humbert’s pet name denies her subjectivity.[20]
Generally, the novel gives little information about her feelings.

The film is not especially
focused on Lolita’s feelings. In the medium of film, her character is
inevitably fleshed out somewhat from the cipher that she remains in the novel.
Nonetheless, Kubrick actually omits the few vignettes in the novel in which
Humbert’s solipsistic bubble is burst and one catches glimpses of Lolita’s
personal misery. Susan Bordo writes, “Kubrick chose not to include any
of the vignettes from the novel which bring Lolita’s misery to the forefront,
nudging Humbert’s obsession temporarily off center-stage. ...Nabokov’s wife,
Vera, insisted—rightly—on ‘the pathos of Lolita’s utter loneliness.’... In
Kubrick’s film, one good sobfest and dead mommy is forgotten. Humbert, to calm
her down, has promised her a brand-new hi-fi and all the latest records. The
same scene in the novel ends with Lolita sobbing, despite Humbert having
plied her with gifts all day.”[21]
Bordo goes on to say “Emphasizing Lolita’s sadness and loss would not have
jived, of course, with the film’s dedication to inflecting the ‘dark’ with the
comic; it would have altered the overwhelmingly ironic, anti-sentimental character
of the movie.” When the novel briefly gives us evidence of Lolita’s sadness and
misery, Humbert glosses over it but the film omits nearly all of these
episodes.

Professor Humbert

Critic Greg Jenkins believes
that Humbert is imbued with a fundamental likability in this film that he does
not necessarily have in the novel.[22]
He has a debonair quality in the film, while in the novel he can be perceived
as much more repulsive. Humbert’s two mental breakdowns leading to sanatorium
stays before meeting Lolita are entirely omitted in the film, as are his
earlier unsuccessful relationships with women his own age (whom he refers to in
the novel as “terrestrial women”) through which he tried to stabilize himself.
His lifelong complexes around young girls are largely concealed in the film,
and Lolita appears older than her novelistic counterpart, both leading Jenkins
to comment “A story originally told from the edge of a moral abyss is fast
moving toward safer ground.”[23]
In short, the novel early flags Humbert as both mentally unsound and
obsessively infatuated with young girls in a way the film never does.

Jenkins notes that Humbert even
seems a bit more dignified and restrained than other residents of Ramsdale,
particularly Lolita’s aggressive mother, in a way that invites the audience to
sympathize with Humbert. Humbert is portrayed as someone urbane and
sophisticated trapped in a provincial small town populated by slightly
lecherous people, a refugee from Old World Europe in an especially crass part
of the New World. For example, Lolita’s piano teacher comes across in the film
as aggressive and predatory compared to which Humbert seems fairly restrained.[24]
The film character of John Farlow talks suggestively of “swapping partners” at
a dance in a way that repels Humbert. Jenkins believes that in the film it is
Quilty, not Humbert, who acts as the embodiment of evil.[25]
The expansion of Quilty’s character and the way Quilty torments Humbert also
invites the audience to sympathize with Humbert.

Because
Humbert narrates the novel, his increased mental deterioration due to anxiety
in the entire second half of the story is more obvious from the increasingly
desperate tone of his narrative. While the film shows Humbert’s increasingly
severe attempts to control Lolita, the novel shows more of Humbert’s loss of
self-control and stability.

Jenkins also notes that some of
Humbert’s more brutal actions are omitted or changed from the film. For
example, in the novel he threatens to send Lolita to a reformatory, while in
the film he promises to never send her there.[26]
He also notes that Humbert’s narrative style in the novel, although elegant, is
wordy, rambling, and roundabout, whereas in the film it is “subdued and
measured”.[24]

Humbert’s infatuation with “nymphets”
in the novel

The film entirely omits the
critical episode in Humbert’s life in which at age 14 he was interrupted making
love to young Annabel Leigh who shortly thereafter died, and consequently omits
all indications that Humbert had a preoccupation with prepubescent girls prior
to meeting Dolores Haze. In the novel, Humbert gives his youthful amorous
relationship with Annabel Leigh, thwarted by both adult intervention and her
death, as the key to his obsession with nymphets. The film’s only mention of “nymphets”
is an entry in Humbert’s diary specifically revolving around Lolita.

Humbert explains that the smell
and taste of youth filled his desires throughout adulthood: “that little girl
with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted [him] ever since”.[27]
He thus claims that “Lolita began with Annabel”[28]
and that Annabel’s spell was broken by “incarnating her in another”.[27]

The idea that anything
connected with young girls motivated Humbert to accept the job as professor of
French Literature at Beardsley College and move to Ramsdale at all is entirely
omitted from the film. In the novel he first finds accommodations with the
McCoo family. He accepts the professorship because the McCoos have a
twelve-year-old daughter, a potential “enigmatic nymphet whom [he] would coach
in French and fondle in Humbertish.”[29]
However, the McCoo house happens to burn down in the few days prior to his
arrival, and this is when Mrs. Haze offers to accommodate Humbert.

Humbert’s attitudes to
Charlotte

Susan Bordo has noticed that in
order to show the callous and cruel side of Humbert’s personality early in the
film, Nabokov and Kubrick have shown additional ways in which Humbert behaves
monstrously towards her mother, Charlotte Haze. He mocks her declaration of
love towards him, and takes a pleasant bath after her accidental death. This
effectively replaces the voice-overs in which he discusses his plans to seduce
and molest Lolita as a means of establishing Humbert as manipulative, scheming,
and selfish.[30]
However, Greg Jenkins has noted that Humbert’s response to Charlotte’s love
note in the film is still much kinder than that in the novel, and that the film
goes to significant lengths to make Charlotte unlikable.

Expansion of Clare Quilty

Quilty’s role is greatly
magnified in the film and brought into the foreground of the narrative. In the
novel Humbert catches only brief uncomprehending glimpses of his nemesis before
their final confrontation at Quilty’s home, and the reader finds out about
Quilty late in the narrative along with Humbert. Quilty’s role in the story is
made fully explicit from the beginning of the film, rather than being a
concealed surprise twist near the end of the tale. In a 1962 interview with Terry
Southern, Kubrick describes his decision to expand Quilty’s role, saying “just
beneath the surface of the story was this strong secondary narrative thread
possible—because after Humbert seduces her in the motel, or rather after she
seduces him, the big question has been answered—so it was good to have this
narrative of mystery continuing after the seduction.”[31]
This magnifies the book’s theme of Quilty as a dark double of Humbert,
mirroring all of Humbert’s worst qualities, a theme which preoccupied Kubrick.[32]

The film opens with a scene
near the end of the story, Humbert’s murder of Quilty. This means that the film
shows Humbert as a murderer before showing us Humbert as a seducer of
minors, and the film sets up the viewer to frame the following flashback as an explanation for the murder.
The film then goes back to Humbert’s first meeting with Charlotte Haze and
continues chronologically until the final murder scene is
presented once again. The book, narrated by Humbert,
presents events in chronological order from the very beginning, opening with
Humbert’s life as a child. While Humbert hints throughout the novel that he has
committed murder, its actual circumstances are not described until near the
very end. NPR’s Bret Anthony Johnston notes that the novel is sort of an
inverted murder mystery: you know someone has been killed, but you have to wait
to find out who the victim is.[33] Similarly, the
online Doubleday publisher’s reading guide to Lolita notes “the mystery
of Quilty’s identity turns this novel into a kind of detective story (in which
the protagonist is both detective and criminal).”[34] This effect is, of course, lost in the
Kubrick film.

In the novel, Miss Pratt, the
school principal at Beardsley, discusses with Humbert Dolores’s behavioral
issues and among other things persuades Humbert to allow her to participate in
the dramatics group, especially one upcoming play. In the film, this role is
replaced by Quilty disguised as a school psychologist named “Dr. Zempf”. This
disguise does not appear in the novel at all. In both versions, a claim is made
that Lolita appears to be “sexually repressed”, as she mysteriously has no
interest in boys. Both Dr. Zempf and Miss Pratt express the opinion that this
aspect of her youth should be developed and stimulated by dating and
participating in the school’s social activities. While Pratt mostly wants
Humbert to let Dolores generally into the dramatic group, Quilty (as Zempf) is
specifically focused on the high school play (written by Quilty and produced
with some supervision from him) which Lolita had secretly rehearsed for (in
both the film and novel). In the novel Miss Pratt naïvely believes this talk
about Dolores’ “sexual repression”, while Quilty in his disguise knows the
truth. Although Peter Sellers is playing only one character in this film,
Quilty’s disguise as Dr. Zempf allows him to employ a mock German accent that
is quintessentially in the style of Sellers’s acting.[35]

With regard to this scene,
playwright Edward Albee‘s 1981 stage adaptation of the novel
follows Kubrick’s film rather than the novel.

The movie retains the novel’s
theme of Quilty (anonymously) goading Humbert’s conscience on many occasions,
though the details of how this theme is played out are quite different in the
film. He has been described as “an emanation of Humbert’s guilty conscience”,[36]
and Humbert describes Quilty in the novel as his “shadow”.[37]

The first and last word of the
novel is “Lolita”.[38]
As film critic Greg Jenkins has noted, in contrast to the novel, the first and
last word of the screenplay is “Quilty”.[39]

Contemplating murder of
Charlotte Haze

·In the novel, Humbert and Charlotte go swimming
in Hourglass Lake, where Charlotte announces she will ship Lo off to a good
boarding school; that part takes place in bed in the film. Humbert’s
contemplation of possibly killing Charlotte similarly takes place at Hourglass
Lake in the book, but at home in the film. This difference affects Humbert’s
contemplated method of killing Charlotte. In the book he is tempted to drown
her in the lake, whereas in the film he considers the possibility of shooting
her with a pistol while in the house, in both scenarios concluding that he
could never bring himself to do it. In his biography of Kubrick, Vincent
LoBrutto notes that Kubrick tried to recreate Hourglass Lake in a studio, but
became uncomfortable shooting such a pivotally important exterior scene in the
studio, so he refashioned the scene to take place at home.[40]
Susan Bordo notes that after Charlotte’s actual death in the film, two
neighbors see Humbert’s gun and falsely conclude Humbert is contemplating
suicide, while in fact he had been contemplating killing Charlotte with it.[41]

·The same attempted killing of Charlotte appears
in the “Deleted Scenes” section of the DVD of the 1997 film (now put back at Hourglass Lake). In
the novel Humbert really considers killing Charlotte and later Lolita accuses
Humbert of having deliberately killed her. Only the first scene is in the 1962
film and only the latter scene appears in the 1997 film.

Lolita’s friends at school

·Lolita’s friend, Mona Dahl, is a friend in
Ramsdale (the first half of the story) in the film and disappears quite early
in the story. In the film, Mona is simply the host of a party which Lolita
abandons early in the story. Mona is a friend of Lolita’s
in Beardsley (the second half of the story) in the novel. In the novel Mona is
active in the school play, Lolita tells Humbert stories about Mona’s love life,
and Humbert notes Mona had “long since ceased” to be (if ever she was) a “nymphet”.
Mona has already had an affair with a Marine and appears to be flirting with
Humbert. She keeps Lolita’s secrets and helps Lolita lie to Humbert when
Humbert discovers that Lolita has been missing her piano lessons. In the
film, Mona in the second half seems to have been replaced by a “Michele” who is
also in the play and having an affair with a Marine and backs up Lolita’s fibs
to Humbert. Film critic Greg Jenkins claims that Mona has simply been entirely
eliminated from the film.[42]

·Humbert is suspicious
that Lolita is developing an interest in boys at various times throughout the
story. He suspects no one in particular in the novel. In the film, he is
twice suspicious of a pair of boys, Rex and Roy, who hang out with Lolita and
her friend Michele. In the novel, Mona has a friend named Roy.

Other differences

·In the novel, the first
mutual attraction between Humbert and Lolita begins because Humbert resembles a
celebrity she likes. In the film, it occurs at a drive-in horror film
when she grabs his hand. The scene is from Christopher Lee’s The Curse of Frankensteinwhen the monster removes his mask. Christine Lee Gengaro proposes that
this suggests that Humbert is a monster in a mask,[43]
and the same theory is developed at greater length by Jason Lee.[44]
As in the novel, Lolita shows affection for Humbert before she departs for
summer camp.

·In the novel, both the
hotel at which Humbert and Dolores first have relations and the stage-play by
Quilty for which Dolores prepares to perform in at her high school is called The
Enchanted Hunter. However, in the novel school headmistress Pratt
erroneously refers to the play as The Hunted Enchanter. In
Kubrick’s film, the hotel bears the same name as in the novel, but now the play
really is called The Hunted Enchanter. Both names are established only
through signage – the banner for the police convention at the hotel and the
marquee for the play – the names are never mentioned in dialogue.

·The relationships
between Humbert and other women before and after Lolita is omitted from the
film. Greg Jenkins sees this as part of Kubrick’s general tendency to
simplify his narratives, also noting that the novel therefore gives us a more “seasoned”
view of Humbert’s taste in women.[45]

·Only the film has a police convention at the
hotel where Humbert allows Lolita to seduce him. Kubrick scholar Michel Ciment
sees this as typical of Kubrick’s general tendency to assail authority figures.[46]

·Lolita completes the school play (written by
Clare Quilty) in the film, but drops out prior to finishing it in the novel. In
the film, we see that Quilty’s play has suggestive symbolism, and Humbert’s
confrontation with Lolita over her missing her piano lessons occurs after her
triumphal debut in the play’s premiere.[47]